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ARU Blogs —
Kelvin Bathe

Hello, my name is Kelvin. The picture tells you all you need to know about my life stage. And it’s five years old now so imagine the current decayed look… a face only a mother could love.

At ARU I am a member of the small but perfectly formed postgraduate marketing group in Cambridge. Most of my career was spent in regional ad agencies before I got too old, too expensive and too opinionated… to all intents and purposes I became unemployable.

Before I started at ARU I was lecturing on a contract basis in a couple of further education colleges. That’s why I speak up in lectures now, not because I know anything but because I understand what it’s like to stand at the front and ask a question and get nothing but silence and bemused looks in return. It is no fun.

So why blog when I have enough on my plate with the course? Hopefully, in this small way, to encourage people of a certain age to come back into education. Simple as that.

Oh, what do I get up to when I am not studying? The usual old man stuff; I love a craft beer or two, watching the genius that is Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, keeping my own blog up to date, enjoying classic rock and Americana music and despairing about the Super Hoops every Saturday afternoon (you’ll notice the absence of gardening, pipe smoking, collecting of any description and line dancing).

Right, this one needs a bit of a heads up, full disclosure, spoiler alert whatever you want to call it as we are about to dive into the world of politics. Couldn’t not, really. There is an election on…I know, why else would Bilbo Baggins be doing a TV ad for a political party… Read more…

Not sure that this is a headline (see picture) that I want to read over my cornflakes. The reason? I took a difficult decision to put other career options on hold, at a dodgy (old) age I might add, and have piled pretty much all of my resources in to a year of postgraduate education… Read more…

A shaper, a co-ordinator, an implementer and a plant run round a field in Ely in search of a missing scientist. Well, the truth is two of them run and the other two stroll but they all cross the line together at the end. And that was the point… Read more…

We have gone all philosophical on the MSc Marketing course. I told you marketing was much more than ads and BOGOFS, it’s deep man. That can sometimes be its weakness though. It is a fact of marketing life that the profession often struggles to be taken seriously… Read more…

A very wise man once said, ‘Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.’ Read more…

It’s Saturday morning and I am wrestling with one of the life’s big questions… am I lumbersexual? No, I had no idea either. Anyway, do I have the required combination of outdoorsy look and townie lifestyle? (stay with me; this is relevant, I promise). Read more…

Or ‘Grumpy old man hopes that bright young things will change his outlook’, which is what I was going to call this piece but then I realised a good title needs more tabloid credentials, something short and not very sweet (‘Freddie Starr ate my hamster’, anyone?)… Read more…

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The views expressed here are those of the individual and do not necessarily represent the views of Anglia Ruskin University. If you've got any concerns please contact us.